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GM's Cruise starts testing fully driverless taxi rides in San Francisco
GM's self-driving Cruise division has launched its fully driverless robo-taxi service in San Francisco, with co-founder Kyle Vogt getting the first ride.
Uber adds all-electric vehicles to its list of ride options in London
Uber users in central London can request an all-electric vehicle instead of a regular ICE or hybrid car.
Uber will let you hire a driver by the hour in select cities
Uber's new Hourly option lets riders make multiple trips in a single ride.
Ford GoRide Health shifts to autonomy and shuts down in five cities
It seemed like things were going well for Ford's GoRide Health, a service that offered non-emergency transportation to hospitals and other health care facilities. This spring, it outlined a plan to expand into 40 cities over the course of four years. Instead, Ford is shutting the service down in the five cities it currently operates. According to TechCrunch, Ford is relocating GoRide Health to Miami, where it will focus on autonomous vehicles.
The first self-driving taxis are cruising around Singapore
Uber announced that it will start self-driving trials in Pittsburgh later this month, but it was beat to the punch by a much less well-known company. Starting today, nuTonomy will offer rides to Singapore residents in specially equipped Mitsubishi i-MiEV or Renault Zoe electric vehicles. As with Uber, passengers won't be alone with a robotic driver like Silicon Valley's hapless Jared. A nuTonomy engineer will be along to monitor the vehicle, and a safety driver will "assume control if needed to ensure passenger comfort and safety," the company wrote.
Uber is letting business travellers book rides in advance
Uber is reportedly allowing a small group of business travelers to schedule rides up to 30 days in advance of when they take 'em. Recode is reporting that the option is being rolled out in Seattle, with San Francisco likely next to get the feature. Rather than actually pre-booking a ride, it's simply a way of scheduling the app to call for a pickup at a specific time and location. Naturally, that means you can't avoid surge pricing, so the utility for such a feature is limited to frequent fliers who want one less thing to worry about when they leave the airport.
Uber recruits engineers with coding puzzles during rides
Uber knows it has a captive audience during rides, and is trying to pick out the coders among them with a new app feature called "Code on the Road." It pops up in the main app and offers "hacker challenges" that are basically 60-second timed coding and debugging tests. Some riders offered the quizzes (like Twitter user Graham Gnall, below) actually work as engineers, but Uber assures Business Insider that it's not tapping any personal info. Rather, it's rolling out the feature in cities with large numbers of tech workers, so you might see it in places like Boston, Seattle and Portland.
Captain EO is coming back to Disney World's EPCOT
As any child of the 1980s can tell you, Disney's Captain EO ride -- starring the "King of Pop", Michael Jackson himself -- was one of the best attractions to ever grace the park. EO debuted at Disney World in Florida back in 1986 and ran for eight years before closing in 1994. Now, Captain EO is back (and not just temporarily like they did after he died). The ride has reopened at Disney World's EPCOT in all of its hokey, 3D glory. Michael Jackson's ragtag team of freedom fighters are set to "bring freedom to countless worlds of despair" -- and keep you entertained for 17 minutes with a mix of '80s futurism and 30-year-old nostalgia.
The Daily Grind: Where do your mounts go when you aren't using them?
Yeah, we need to sort this out today because it's been bugging me. Where do your mounts go when you aren't using them? I mean, I can squint hard and ignore how mounts poof in and out of existence like some sort of incredible magic trick that everyone in these virtual worlds can do. But when they leave, where do they go? Alternate dimension? Shrunk down and stuck inside of your back pocket, where your miniaturized horse can nibble on a carrot that's now the size of its head? Handed to an off-screen assistant who faithfully jogs along just outside of camera range until you need your sweet ride again? How have you settled this issue internally? I need to know because this is (no pun intended) driving me nuts! Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What would you pay for a fancy ride?
World of Warcraft set the bar at $25 for a shiny horse. EverQuest II followed suit. You can imitate Marty McFly or Aladdin in City of Heroes for about $7.50. And for various amounts of cash in Star Trek Online, you can pimp out your spaceship with all sorts of shiny new nacelles -- or you can ride in a ship with some famous modifications. It's certainly cheaper than a sports car in the real world, but it's still part of a trend of real-world cash buying you a new vehicle. (Or carpet.) So the question should be obvious -- what would you pay for a fancy in-game ride? Are you willing to drop sparklepony money? Would you not pay more than a dollar for something that doesn't have any functional benefit over other in-game options? Or would you drop even more money on something sufficiently shiny, perhaps a horse-car that could be seen from orbit? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What's the coolest ride you've had in an MMO?
One of the universal aspects of MMOs is the fact that you have to cover some distance. And not just a few feet in any given direction -- no matter how instanced, you'll be getting from one end of the map to the other on a regular basis. In some games, such as Guild Wars, this is accomplished with easy teleportation, but most games give you some other way of getting from place to place. Sometimes it's a mount, and sometimes you ride a javelin from one point on the map to the next for a specific quest. Maybe you think the coolest ride you've had has been a mount, perhaps a motorcycle or a ravenous beast. Maybe it's been a form of static transport, like an airship or a boat. Or maybe you thought the coolest ride ever was something unique to a given quest, like riding a bomb down to a new quest area. So what's your choice for the coolest ride to be had in an MMO? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
French basketball team 'trains' with robots, learns how to 'win'
To the list of French accomplishments you may now add "robot basketball training" -- at least if the video above is to be believed. But you probably shouldn't believe it when members of Poitiers Basket 86 testify that amusement park rides improved the team's "spatial orientation" and helped them defeat top-ranked Chalon. It'd be different if the "robots" were teaching them perfect free-throw or helping them walk, obviously, but PB86 is known for its innovative advertising, and this seems like a quirky example. Hit the video above to see the pranksters at work, but know that, as with Sartre and Camus, something gets lost in translation. [Thanks, Antoine]
Disney World's Haunted Mansion gets interactive upgrade, digital spooks (video)
It may not be as scary as Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents, but the Florida theme park's Haunted Mansion just got a ghostly upgrade. The ride's grand finale, which previously positioned hitchhiking ghosts -- by way of half-silvered mirrors -- alongside unsuspecting visitors, is now reportedly using a series of digital mirrors and sensors to make things more interactive. As opposed to just popping up next to passengers, Disney's Ezra, Gus, and Phineas are now equipped to rip your head off, blow it up balloon-style, and send it flying. Sure it sounds scary, but this is Disney, the same company that didn't see the nightmare-inducing capabilities of a robotic Obama. For a peek at the new creepers, peep the video after break.
Free Realms adds new pegasus, horse, ponies, and more!
The Free Realms team has been crazy busy at work lately creating all manner of new things that players have been clamoring for. With the recent addition of dragon and dinosaur mounts came the call for horses for players to ride. As such, they introduced new horse mounts, but then added even more fun in the form of pegasus rides as well! The horses are available for members to pick up at 450 Station Cash each. The White-Nosed Mares are colored in fantasy-like style -- pink, purple, blue, pure white and more -- while the Stallion model features more traditional horse colors like gray, black, tan, and chestnut. Pegasus rides, on the other hand, are available at 550 Station Cash, and come in lilac, blue-black, gray, pink, sea-foam green, and white.
Free Realms introduces T-Rex and flying dragon mounts
Traveling in Free Realms just got a whole lot cooler. Today, the team at Sony Online Entertainment dropped a shiny surprise into the cash shop -- mounts! Currently only available for paying members, these new T-Rex and Dragon mounts come in several different colors for players to pick from. When you consider that SOE treated players to some free Station Cash as part of the recent ConnecDING promotions in EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Free Realms, members may even have part (or all) of their mounts paid for already. (Assuming you haven't spent it, anyway!) In any event, we suspect Free Realms will be full of many dinosaurs and dragons soon -- and perhaps some new members itching to pick up their very own mounts. For a complete list of features on these new mounts, keep reading beyond the cut.
Wurlybird indoor 'amusement park ride': better stock up on the sawdust
Let's face it: even though most amusement parks promise the grownups drunken fun while the kiddies puke their guts out on the rides, in reality you end up spending the entire vacation following your brats around the park and making sure they don't attack anymore of those litigious costumed characters. Well what if you could offer little Timmy and Janie an "amusement park"-style ride...right in their own home?!? Enter the Wurlybird Flyer from Wurlybird Ltd, a "kid-powered," merry-go-round-like contraption that securely holds two of your vicious monsters beloved little tykes and allows them to spin themselves into delirious fun, a religious awakening, or uncontrollable vomiting, whichever comes first. Launching this spring, the Wurlybird comes in either a self-assembled Junior version for kids 3 to 8, or as a fully-assembled Flyer version that bumps the maximum age up to 10. No word on pricing so far, but considering that the demo reel just screams cheesy British infomercial, we doubt that either of these models is going to break the bank.
HDTV Listings for March 26, 2006
What we're watching: No new Grey's Anatomy? Nooooo. Where will we get our soap operatic exploits of doctors in 720p? Until General Hospital upgrades to HD and ER becomes the show that it was 10 years ago, nowhere would be the appropriate answer. In it's stead we will accept warmed over episodes of CSI (after watching The Evidence, we appreciate this show much more) and Pistons vs. Nets on ESPN. I went to a couple Pistons games this week and after several overpriced beers experienced considerable compression issues and artifacting, real life isn't all it's made out to be.I haven't seen tonight's episode of Rides before, where four teams of designers take a crack at the Chevy HHR, so that will get at least a look as well.Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
